Lucifer's Lottery

last longer. Only people who buy ’em are the bums and illegals. Big deal. Besides, the heat kills the germs.”

Hudson didn’t know what to say.

“So what’s this pain-in-the-ass favor?”

Hudson didn’t like to lie but in this circumstance—A nude deaconess?—he could surmise no other option. “I found a hundred-dollar bill today in the street but, I don’t know—it feels funny.”

“Funny?” Randal questioned. “As in fake?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. It’s, like, brand-new. But I’ve seen you check bills here with the funky pen . . .”

“Anything for a friend.” Randal got it. “You want to make sure it’s not funny money before you try to spend it.”

“Exactly.”

Behind the counter, Randal produced a fat black pen whose body read SMARTCASH—COUNTERFEIT DETECTION MARKER. Hudson gave him one of the ultracrisp bills.

“I get a 20 percent commission if it’s real, right?” Randal posed, holding the uncapped marker.

Anything for a friend, my ass, Hudson realized. “Yeah, sure.”

Randal rubbed the bill between his fingers. “Wow, that is new.” He grinned up. “You sure you’re not printing these up in your pad?”

“With what? My oyster board?”

Randal chuckled. “Or maybe in the church! That whacko Father Darren’s probably printing his own funny money and getting you to pass it!”

“Hilarious.”

Randal drew a quick notch on the bill, then gave the iodine-saturated ink time to dry.

It’s fake, Hudson knew. It’s got to be fake. It’s just some scam I haven’t figured out yet. Six grand landing in his lap out of the blue like this? Too good to be true.

Randal shrugged, deposited the bill in the register, and gave Hudson eighty dollars back. “It’s real.”

“You’re kidding me . . .”

“It’s as real as my coffee is bad.”

“That’s real.”

“I’m gonna spend my end on another hooker tonight, but not that ratchet-job knocked-up cow that just left. What’cha gonna spend the rest on?”

Hudson wavered, suddenly hard-pressed to conceal his excitement. But this is avarice, isn’t it? He’d been given a very mysterious $6,000 via a very mysterious scenario. Nevertheless, the money was real, and the arcane note she’d left indicated that he could keep it under no obligation. “I’ll probably put it in the church plate.”

Randal bristled. “Fuck that! Put it in my plate! That damn church gets all kinds of money!”

“Tell you what, I’ll take us both out to dinner before I leave.”

“Cool!”

Two roughneck construction workers came in and each purchased a hot dog. Hudson cringed as they left.

“I should’ve asked them how my spit tastes.” Randal honked laughter.

“That’s pretty revolting, man.”

The bell rung. “You wanna talk about revolting? Check this homeless scumbag out,” Randal said.

A malodorous man who surely weighed 400 pounds squeezed through the door. He mumbled to himself, his lips like mini bratwursts on the huge, greasy face. A rim of long gray-black hair (with flecks of garbage in it) half circumscribed the bald, dirt-smudged head. Stained orange sweatpants clung to elephantine legs, and for a shirt he wore a reeking yellow raincoat. He seemed to jabber something like, “I am by a vent with a bone,” and, “Would somebody please cut off my head?”

Jesus, Hudson thought. The poor bastard. Totally destitute and schizophrenic. It seemed there were more and more of these lost souls popping up all the time since the recession hit.

Randal cut Hudson a snide grin. “So we’re all children of God, huh? Well if so, then God’s got a shitload of fucked-up kids.”

“It doesn’t involve God at all,” Hudson answered, unfazed. “Humanity exists in error ever since Eve bit the apple. God gave us the brains and the wherewithal to help people like this guy, with medical technology and compassion. But we have to choose to have the grace to do it.” Hudson reached in his pocket.

“Don’t you dare give that walking garbage can money,” Randal ordered. “The shit- smelling fucker rips me off all the time.” He rapped a baseball bat against the counter, and yelled at the man, “Get out of here! I’ve got you on tape ripping off Wing Dings and Yoo-hoos three nights in a row!”

The man looked back, wobbling. His phlegmatic voice fluttered. “I wanna-wanna ha-ha-hot dog! It was Peter Lawford—Bobby watched the door . . .”

Randal CLACKED! the bat again. “Take your crazy ass out of here! Otherwise I call the cops after I joggle that piss sponge you’ve got for a brain!”

“Fucker,” the voice rattled back; then he hitched and released a trumpet blast of colonic gas.

“Aw, Jesus! You’re a fuckin’ animal! How can somebody homeless weigh that much? You shoplift five thousand calories a day?”

Hudson’s eyes teared from the sudden waft.

“You’re a fucker!” the man warbled back.

Randal waved the bat. “I’m killin’ ya if you don’t GET OUT!”

The huge man shimmied in place, then leaned over, stuck his fingers down his throat, and—

“No! Don’t!”

—burped up what had to be a gallon of vomit. It hit the floor like a bucket of barley and vegetable soup.

“Holy shit!” Randal came around the counter with the bat, but Hudson grabbed him.

“Just let him go, man. He’s messed up, he can’t help it.”

Randal fumed, but by now the man had already wobbled out of the store. He looked at the splatter of vomit on the floor and nearly keeled over.

“Yeah, he can’t help it—shit.”

“It’s called compassion, man,” Hudson said, gagging at the smell. “You really have a lot of ill will inside, Randal. He can’t help the way he is.”

Randal wailed. “He just puked Niagara Falls on my floor!”

“Compassion, Randal. Compassion.”

“Fine, smart guy. Ready to walk it like you talk it?”

“How’s that?”

“Now you can have some compassion for me.” Randal threw Hudson a mop. “And help me clean this up.”

Hudson laughed and said, “Sure.”

(IV)

That night Hudson was heckled by a stew of awful dreams. He heard a wind that sounded like screams. Words seemed to fly in the air as if abstract birds: “DON’T BE A CRUMMY PERSON!” and “I AM BY A VENT WITH A BONE,” and “WALKS IN HERE WITH A BELLYFUL OF WHITE TRASH AND RIPS ME OFF?” and “I’M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT YOU’VE WON THE SENARY.”

He dreamed, first, of being body-rubbed by GAG and DO ME, both naked, of course, but just as the duo prepared to fellate him, they began to cackle like witches. Hudson’s eyes sprang open to see they now both had vampire fangs. Next, the dream showed him a Polanski-like tracking shot which soared about the nighted town amid an aural muttering that could only be described as black, and suddenly the point of view soared down onto a drab sidewalk and a fence and a trashily dressed woman climbing